Declare War on Police Brutality

26 Reasons to Not Trust the Police

The police aren’t making too many friends these days. It seems like there isn’t a day that goes by where some tragic and outrageous story comes out involving the the cops and somehow violating somebody’s rights, or even killing them. But, no matter how much we see this behavior, no matter how frequent it becomes, there seems to be an army of ignorant, dependent, terrified people who will jump in to defend the police from any criticism, because, you know, they are heroes…. Next time you encounter somebody like that, show them this article, and if they still dismiss it, just move on, there’s plenty of people with eyes to see and ears to hear if you aren’t wasting your time with the willfully apathetic.

But first off, I want to give a shout out to all of the alternative media outlets that tirelessly cover issues of police abuse, and show us just how common these violations are:

Now, just why should we be skeptical of the police? Well where do I begin….

1. The Police Have No Duty To Protect You
It’s plastered right on the side of many police cruisers: “To Protect And to Serve”, but this serves as little more then a PR slogan for the public to feel more comfortable and trusting of the police. In 2005 the supreme court ruled in a case titled Warren Vs The District of Columbia it was ruled that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect, all the way to and including against a women who has a protection from abuse order from a husband and is being attacked by said husband. Being stalked? No duty to protect. Locked away somewhere by an attacker. No duty to protect. Being raped? Well, you get the point, unfortunately. The court went as far as to say “”[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists. ”. Supporters of this verdict will tell you that it is because individuals are expected to protect themselves and their loved ones, which is true, but many states such as New York, and New Jersey get in the way of that with their draconian gun laws, effectively making them reliant on police, who then have no duty to oblige. A viscous cycle indeed.

2. Private Prisons Have “Lockup Quotas”
In 2011 Management & Training Corp threatened to sue the state of Arizona over a line in the contract between the two that required that the prison remain 97% full. The lawsuit threat was spurred after 3 murder convicts escaped from the prison, and the state found the prison to be “dysfunctional” and thus stopped sending inmates to the facility. The state caved and paid 3 Million dollars in tax payer dollars to a prison that let 3 murderers escape from their facility to cover the losses created by the diverted prisoner population. This notion of “lockup quotas” or “guaranteed occupancy rates” has actually found to be a common practice after analyzing over 60 contracts between states and prisons, with some Arizona prisons having an expectation of 100% occupancy!

3. Police Profit From Enforcing the War On Drugs
Did you know that when the police arrest somebody for a drug charge, even marijuana, they actually earn money? Yup, for any low level arrest, a department can make $153 per arrest in federal grants, called Byrne Grants. This totally changes the incentives for what police work is. When you combine this, with the fact that drugs are widely available, hugely demanded, very profitable, and in some states, marijuana is becoming legal, the fact that there are lockup quotas, this makes the average citizen a fish to be baited into the system for profit, more then a master that is to be served, as all government is supposed to be. Then there is asset forfeiture, another very profitable revenue stream. This is where alleged drug dealers have their property stolen under the suspicion that they got that property from nasty drug money. It’s literally legal theft. It’s such an unsustainable method of revenue generation that many departments have a blanket opposition to legalized marijuana, despite its overwhelming medical potential in addition to the moral hazard of assuming what control over what people can do with their own bodies, that departments have even expressed that the stability of their budgets is dependent on this insane practice.

4. SWAT Teams Are Corporations, And Are Used VERY Commonly
In a 2014 report on police militarization, the ACLU was effectively told by Massachusetts SWAT agencies, that they are private corporations, and thus are not subject to open records requests, and generally not obligated to answer to the public. The report went on to find that SWAT are overseen by LECs or Law Enforcement Councils made up of police chiefs in the surrounding area, and funded by these same departments. Somehow, even though it’s a police agency made up of police departments and police officers, these LECs were able to incorporate into 501(c)(3) status, granting them corporate privacy. In Massachusetts alone 240 of the existing 351 departments belong to these LECs, effectively creating a blanket of secrecy over SWAT and it’s operations.

This is met with a dramatic rise in the use of SWAT teams over the past 25 years. It is commonly thought that SWAT are used for hostage crises and other extreme situations, but more often then not, they are used for suspected drug raids. And as we have seen, they often get it tragically wrong. The methods used for a lot of these drug raids are overwhelmingly forceful using no knock, forced entry, flash grenades, and other excessive shows of force, even for $2 worth of marijuana. Some studies have shown that SWAT teams are called out as much as 40,000 Times a year.

5. Police Can, And Do, Lie To The Public
Many people think that as “authority figures” that police have an obligation to be honest, but that is untrue. The most common example of this is undercover police telling suspects that they are not undercover. But this extends quite a bit. Police commonly use intimidation tactics in order to scare or trick you into giving up your rights to privacy and not to incriminate yourself. They can tell you that a witness has seen you that hasn’t, that a confession was made that never was, that you are legally obligated to do things that you aren’t, like submit to searches. The most effective defense is knowledge, courage, and a camera.

6. The Police Kill Far More People Then Commonly Thought
The FBI reports that in 2013 they killed only 461 People, with an average of about 400 people killed per year since 2008. It has been found that this is inaccurate. First of all, these numbers are based on what are considered to be “justified homicides”. Thats right, the FBI is not interested in telling you about police murders, just police homicides. If that wasn’t bad enough, the data given to the FBI is turned in on a voluntary basis. In other words, if a police department like, oh I don’t know, the Albuquerque police department decides that such disclosure is bad for business, then they can keep the information to themselves.

On the flip side of this, several independent efforts, such as Fatal Encounters, Deadspin , and my personal favorite because of it’s simplicity, Killed By Police have taken a crack at getting the real number, and with legitimate sourcing, have come up with over 1000 people killed both in 2013 and 2014.

7. Police Officers Are Not In The Top 10 Most Dangerous Jobs
Many people will claim that the police are selfless heroes who put their life on the line on a regular basis for your safety. Much like the PR slogan of “protect and serve”, this is another inaccurate factoid that serves to suppress criticism of police officers. Data from the bureau of labor statistics shows that being a construction worker, roofer, or truck driver are much more dangerous then being police officers. In fact, you are statistically safer as a cop then as a civilian, with 2013 being one of the Safest years on record for police. This is in stark contrast to the perilous dangers that police would have you think they encounter every day.

8. Police Kill A Lot of People’s Pets
While it is unclear exactly how often it happens due to a lack of data, through the use of cell phone video’s and the alternative reporting, we are getting a glimpse of how often police kill man’s best friend. A development team is currently working on a documentary entitled ”Puppycide” tackling the issue in depth, with the website claiming that a pet is killed every 98 minutes.

9. Police Will Share Private Photographs With Each Other For Amusement
Last October, Officer Sean Harrington of the California Highway Patrol was arrested after after a DUI suspect that he had arrested alleged that he had gone through her phone without her permission, and then proceeded to send himself nude photos of her. After a search warrant was served, it was found that Harrington was not alone in this behavior, and several other officers were identified who not only admitted to doing this multiple times, but called it part of “a game”. Later evidence showed several police commenting on the photos with each other. Harrington, an Dublin, CA officer, claimed to have learned this “game” from LA, and that it was a common thing among police officers. It’s anybodies guess how many police officers can figure out they can victimize women like this across the country.

10. Police Can Enforce Laws They Don’t Know
2015 Started off with another blow to freedom, as the Supreme Court, in Heien Vs. North Carolina ruled A police officer can stop a car based on a mistaken understanding of the law without violating the Fourth Amendment. This arose after a man was found with cocaine in his car following a search, based on a stop where the suspect had a tail light out. Only problem is, no law exists making that a crime, or a reason to get a search. The officer was mistaken, which lead to the defendant motioning to dismiss the cocaine as evidence as it was the result of an illegal search. The supreme court sided with the officer. This creates a double standard in the application of law. If you or I are guilty of a crime that we legitimately did not know we have committed, ignorance of the law is no excuse and we have our lives torn apart. A police officer does it, and it’s “valid” and your life is still ripped apart.

11. Police Have Technology That Greatly Infringes Our Right To Privacy f
Everybody knows that the TSA has been data mining us through our phones, and our computers for years now. But it’s not just the TSA that is collecting data, but maybe even your own local police department. Many police departments are making use of what is called Stingray technology without a warrant to track peoples cell phones for anything that might lead to a drug bust. LAPD has even used the technology on non suspected neighbors of suspects in search of info! And of course, this has all been found to somehow be constitutional according to the Arizona Superior Court.

Some Police Departments, such as NYPD have taken to use TSA like Naked body scanner technology to scan people and their cars in search of guns in New York, where guns are unconstitutionally illegal. Not only do these scanners present a serious threat to every person’s right to privacy, but also a serious health threat

In addition to this, A RAND Corporation study has found that 70% of police departments use license plat scanners. These are scanners that scan your license plate information, allowing full access to it for the officer, usually without knowledge, consent, warrant, or even a traffic violation.

Many of these departments work hand in hand with fusion centers, with the federal government via the Department Of Homeland Security being able to take over local departments, so any information that a police department has is liable to end up in the hands of the federal government as well.

12. Police Will Potentially Kill For Even The Most Minute Laws
All police encounters are potentially deadly. As the Eric Garner case has shown to the whole country, the police will escalate any situation to maintain control and dominance. If it came down to it, they would kill you for a seatbelt violation if you don’t comply with them how they want you to. Any law, ordinance, or statue is essentially a death threat to disobedience. If you get a ticket, they demand money at gun point, you don’t pay, you get a warrant and they will come to put you in a cage, you resist the cage and they will hurt or kill you. That is how it works. ALL laws are enforced at gun point, and there are so many laws that you can be put in the cross hairs at any given moment and not even know it.

13. Police Unions Keep Violent Police On The Street
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you see a story where a cop is overtly abusive, obviously in the wrong, and definitely undeserving of a badge, and that cop is fired. And to many people, justice is served and that is the end, but in many cases, it isn’t. The Atlantic has compiled a list of examples of how police unions will go to bat for people who have been investigated by internal affairs and fired, and get them their job back or get their punishment reduced. This list is just the tip of the iceberg. Unions are known for protecting and shielding police from criticism, no matter how outrageous they behave.

14. The Police Have Their Own Secret Society Called The Fraternal Order of Police
Like it’s name suggests, the FOP is a fraternal organization that has hundreds of thousands of members who meet up only with each other, in private, in thousands of lodges across the country. It’s cops meeting with other cops to figure out how to push forward their interests. The FOP lobbies a good bit of money to their friends who then cover their backs in the police unions. The FOP gets involved in a lot of reactionary measures, such as Security and fundraising for Darren Wilson, even as the case publicly became little more then a sad joke to usher in the inevitable judgment. Now they are Calling for ‘Waze’ to be disabled, even though the app and the technology are an extension of free speech.

15. They Can Discriminate Against New Hires On The Basis of Too High Of An IQ
In September of 2000, The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision that was being contested by Robert Jordan, an aspiring NYPD officer. He scored 33 points on his police exam, which corresponds to an IQ of about 125, but NYPD was only interested in hiring people that scored around the 22 point area, corresponding to about a 104 IQ. That’s right, NYPD is NOT interested in hiring the best man for the job. They claimed that this score mean that Robert would get bored with the job.

But let’s be honest here, this has little to do with Robert “being bored”. The court even admitted that it was an unwise procedure. No this is more about making sure that free thinking people, people who might question orders, who might morally oppose enforcing certain laws, people who might expose corruption, or blow the whistle on police abuse, or any other crossing of the thin blue line, are kept out of police work.

16. Even Small, Local Police Departments Have Received Military Equipment
It is no secret that police departments across the country have received a frightening amount of military equipment. Fully automatic rifles, anti mine tanks, grenade launchers, you name it, many police departments have it. What is not quite as well known is just how wide spread this has become. Very, Very small police departments all over the country.

17. Cops Are Going Out Of Their Way To Hire Returning Veterans
Now this can get touchy, as it is well known that veterans have a high unemployment rate. That being said, I think the argument can be made that in many cases the role of a combat veteran is only appropriate for police work if the police have become seriously militarized, and that the role of the police has switched from protect to serve to something more closely resembling that of a military platoon. Posse Comitatus strictly forbids the military from being used as a police force (but of course, it has been violated). The reason for this is that having a standing army in your own country enforcing laws with the kind of firepower that the military has is by definition a military occupation, which I would argue the police have become. NYPD has already proclaimed to be able to shoot down a plane, for example.

The Justice Department are offering “COPS grants” to police departments that hire veterans, and where incentives are, people follow.

Another troubling aspect of this is that many many veterans suffer from PTSD, (which, by the way, the federal government could massively reduce by repealing federal drug laws.). It Is hard to know just how many of them actually have PTSD. Many have chosen to hide their symptoms from the VA because in a lot of cases PTSD is being used to take away the gun rights of veterans. On top of that, police are required to do extra psych evaluations to tackle PTSD if there is a history of it in the applicant, but if the applicant has never reported it, there is “nothing to worry about” from the hiring department’s point of view. Between the grants incentivising veterans towards police work, the number of homeless vets there are, and how many who are more in need of help then a new war zone on the homeland, and it’s not hard to imagine that there are at least some combat veteran police officers who should not be in that job.

18. Police Have Little To No Real Accountability
So who arrests the cops? Other cops, after and internal investigation turns up wrong doing first, of course. So after the police investigate themselves, guess how often they find themselves to be in the wrong? Not very often at all.
Grand Juries vote to indict the defendants almost every time. But if the defendant is a police officer, it magically becomes very difficult to indict them.

In the event that cops do have body cameras, they simply can Turn them off. As we saw with Eric garner, and I know from personal experience, that cops will lie under oath, conveniently “lose” evidence, fabricate charges, lose their footage and the list goes on and on of all the tricks they can and will pull to keep you down. In 2 cases, both for summary offense violations, I had 2 separate lawyers tell me, essentially that I am innocent, and I have a great case, but that its the police and there just isn’t hope. Cops word are automatically taken as truth in court, putting the defendant in a position where they must prove their innocence, turning the justice system on its head.

20. Many Police Departments Have A Culture Of Racism
This is something that the black community has, for good reason, been screaming about for decades. The subject reached a bit of a head last year with Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner all morally unjustifiably being killed by the police. Statistics show that You are more likely to get arrested as a black drug dealer then a white one, even though there are more white drug dealers. They are more likely to be arrested for Marijuana Related Charges, they are for more likely to be subject to Stop and frisk, which is essentially random, and warrantless searches. With 25% of black males entering the justice system, they are way more likely to be arrested by police. Former police officers have gotten on the record about just how racist and sexist many of their co workers were.

21. They Have No Mercy For The Homeless
The country is in economic doldrums that the government would like to have you believe have been on an upswing, but sadly It’s getting worse. There are over Over 600,000 homeless at any given moment, and economic trends ensure that that will probably rise. Starting with the Occupy raids in 2011, there has been a trend of police raiding homeless encampments and displacing already displaced people. In Some cases they run blanket background checks on all of the residents of a homeless shelter. other times they just force the people out, or even shoot them.

22. Some Police Departments Do Weapons Training With Targets Depicting Pregnant Woman, Children, And The Elderly
It’s truly chilling, and bizarre, but it’s true. The targets were made by a company called “Law Enforcement Targets Inc”, all targets include whoever imaged, whether it be a pregnant woman, or a child, with a gun pointing back at them. This line of targets is called the “Zero Hesitation” series, what hesitation is looking to be eliminated, I’m sure you can figure out just by looking at the images. With $5.5 million worth of targets sold, at 99 cents a piece, it’s safe to say they have been spread to police shooting ranges all over the country.

23. They Will Plant Evidence On People
The Walter Scott video served as a major wake up call to people all over the country to the corruption of the police force. Not only was Michael Slager found to be lying when he said that he “feared for his life” from the fleeing Walter Scott, who he shot in the back, but the video also showed Slager planting a taser in order to “prove” that there was a threat when there wasn’t. To make matters worse, the senior officers assured him that he would have days before he would be asked any questions about the shooting, assuring him that he could come up with any story he needed to. The department also backed his story that Scott had fought with him and brought the shooting on himself, before the video came out and put egg on the entire department’s face.

Unfortunately, this does not appear to be an isolated incident of an officer planting evidence and framing his victim to take the fall. On a segment on “Fox and Friends”, for District Attorney Arthur Aidala, who has been on Fox news many times as an expert analyst on legal matters, said in no uncertain terms that over the course of 30 years that planting evidence on somebody that was killed by police was a common occurrence, saying:

When I was in the DA’s office in the 80s and 90s, that was standard operating procedure. Police officers — I hate to say this — would keep a second gun that nobody knew about on their ankle, so if they ever killed someone they shouldn’t have they would take that gun out.

I’m talking about dirty cops in the 70s and 80s.

As a DA, he must have sided with such cops many, many times over the course of his career to have this information.

It doesn’t stop at the 90’s though. Earlier this year, a former Philadelphia cop, Jeffrey Walker, who was on trial for years worth of embezzlement, false arrests, false charges, corruption, had testified against his fellow officers in order to avoid a life sentence. Yes, a cop on trial for life and it wasn’t murder, the level of corruption was THAT bad and sustained for THAT long. He went on to detail how they would target “White males, college boys, wearing khaki pants, easy to intimidate”, sometimes even holding victims over balconies, to extort money and drugs from them. He once carried a safe full of drug money down 17 flights of steps to avoid the cameras on the elevator. He was just one member of a inner circle mafia within the Philadelphia Police Department.

Also this year, another video surfaced of a police officer planting drugs inside a man’s car after that man had been brutally beaten and choked. His “crime” was running a stop sign

A simple youtube search yields a frightening number of results.

24. They Have Ready Made Stories Designed To Clear Them Of Wrong Doing
This is another area where the Walter Scott case destroyed the facade of the police as honest and trustworthy. In the time immediately after, the police backed Michael Slager’s story without question. It wasn’t until the video surfaced that the entire situation was found to be full of holes and lies.

Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, titled Why Cops Lie, wrote:

“Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

He goes on tie the culture of lying within police departments with the war on drugs, because narcotics officers have incentives, as outlined above, to make as many drug related arrests as possible at all costs. The result is persecution of poor and minority communities who are unable to defend themselves.

Because police have set themselves up as the arbiters of the law, average people on the jury are quick to take their side in a case where its a “their word against mine” type of scenario, basing judgment solely on police testimony, even if there is a total lack of any other type of evidence. This gives police officers a “too big to fail” type of safety when it comes to honesty in the courtroom. More often then not, the cops have what they would call a “working relationship” with judges, prosecutors and even defense lawyers. To everybody else it much more closely resembles a “conflict of interest”. Judges have an incentive to lock people up to fulfill the aforementioned prison occupancy quotas, prosecutors want to have a good record, and defense lawyers want a play to get the most money for the least amount of work. Not to mention, infamously, arrest quotas from the police.

25. If Things Get Bad In Your Area, They Will Simply Stop Responding To “Lesser Crime”
To Protect And To Serve….. Unless you aren’t a big enough victim to be worth our time. That’s right, in areas all over the country, the police have announced that they simply will not respond to certain crimes like vehicular theft or burglary. Granted, these areas are some of the most violent in the whole country, and the cops claim they are doing this so they are more able to respond to shootings and other violent crimes, but I think I speak for most everybody when I say that we would prefer that they would then just not enforce frivolous laws such as those for drug possession, but of course that is noticeably absent from the list of crimes that these departments have said they will no longer be responding to. Areas that have followed this policy includeChicago, Oakland, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Jose and others.

26. They Would Rather Go After Drug Users Then Violent Criminals
When examining violent crime clearance rates, that is the percentage of cases that are closed due to arrest, or “exceptional means”, we find that Cops are horribly inefficient at making arrests having to do with violent crime, as well as property crime. The highest clearance rate, according to the FBI is murder at 60%. That means that only slightly more then half of all murders have an arrest made to close the case. But the focus comes when you look at the sheer numbers. The most recent numbers I could find were from 2012, in that year over 1.5 Million people were arrested on drug charges, with just over 500,000 were arrested for violent crime. Obviously, with such low clearance rates and such high number of drug arrests, there is a huge missed opportunity by the police to actually administer justice for people that are victims of actual crime.

About author

Filming Cops was started in 2010 as a conglomerative blogging service documenting police abuse. The aim isn’t to demonize the natural concept of security provision as such, but to highlight specific cases of State-monopolized police brutality that are otherwise ignored by traditional media outlets.

America has a serious, institutionalized, systemic law enforcement problem. Over the last 4 decades, our law enforcement has become increasingly militarized, putting every citizen at risk of being shot and killed for nothing more than reaching for their wallet, as instructed, or less. This may increase safety for police officers (debatable, in the long run), but at the expense of making American citizens far less safe, which is the exact opposite of the goals of law enforcement. We need to create systems that bring back accountability within every level of the justice system.

Nationally, we need to:

1. Create citizen oversight committees with powers of subpoena and prosecutorial discretion for every law enforcement agency in the country. A special independent prosecutor must be assigned immediately for officer-involved shootings. Committee members should be randomly selected and replaced often, like grand jurors, to avoid corruption.

2. Require law enforcement officers to be personally insured to protect taxpayers from lawsuits. Too risky for insurance? No insurance, no badge. Insurance could be partially publicly subsidized.

3. Require every law enforcement officer to wear a camera. No camera, no gun. Also, implement GPS tracking on all police cars and cameras.

6. All police agencies must keep a database of every officer-caused civilian injury, shooting or killing, and that data must be periodically transmitted to a third-party, non-biased national database.

7. Any officer involved in a shooting must be alcohol and drug tested immediately.

8. Officers should be made aware of studies on abuse of power, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. Ensure there are clear policies on use of force.

9. More training to deal with mentally ill, or a mental illness crisis unit. More training and encouragement to use peacemaking, conflict resolution, and de-escalation skills. Increase educational requirements, focusing on psychology, sociology, and social work.

10. Create a special number (third party, independent of police) to report police brutality. Victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings should immediately be appointed an attorney to represent their position/case.

11. Create national database of abusive officers, so they don’t just get hired elsewhere.

12. Reverse militarization of police forces. Take away military weapons, APC’s, uniforms, and especially the attitude. Police officers are civilians, not a branch of the military. Require at least 5 years between active duty military and civilian police employment. Keep SWAT/military weapons and equipment under lock and key only to be used in genuine emergencies. Quit viewing the community you police as a “war zone”.

13. Prohibit television shows that glorify bad, illegal, or unconstitutional policing, such as “Cops”. Glorifying these behaviors creates a dangerous situation for American citizens and should not be tolerated.

14. Increase community outreach. Hire officers from the community. Officers need to be more in touch with the people they are sworn to protect.

15. End no-knock raids. It is perfectly legal for a home owner to respond to a break in with gun in hand, which gets them killed when the police are the intruders. This makes it unreasonably dangerous on citizens, especially when cops often go to the wrong address.

16. Reform forfeiture laws to protect citizens’ property rights and due process. No forfeiture proceedings until after conviction. All forfeiture proceeds go directly to the victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings.

17. End drug prohibition/war on drugs. Use harm reduction strategies.

18. End private prison industry.

19. Create a national organization dedicated to these ideals.

Gary Williams Jr.

all great ideas, but as with all dictatorial tyrants, the only way they will ever give up “their power” is by force. the govt, i.e. congress is equally guilty by proxy. they have known all along this “problem” exists. and they do nothing. every single member of law enforcement, all prosecutors and judges, from the locals, to the supreme court are guilty of allowing them to walk. when they know damn good and well they are as much of an animal as anyone on death row. if not more so.

Bill Allyn

Yep. All very true. But you’ll for sure never get what you want if you don’t if you don’t even know what you want, so I created the list, so that people would at least see there might be another way.

And you think petitions work and shunning the system does not work? You might want to re-look at the problems and reconsider your position.

Tre Roberts

No, I think we have to do both. I believe in multi-pronged approaches. We all have our part to play.Thanks for asking and not just assuming.

highlanderjuan

I understand why you developed the list as you did, and you offer many good suggestions, but remember that we have thousands of police departments and tens of federal police agencies. We can’t get the feds to abide by the Constitution or the laws that exist – how the hell are we going to get the local PDs to do that? It is easier to simply shut down the local PDs and get the county sheriffs to abide by the Constitution. Oath Keepers and CSPOA exist for a reason, and if your local sheriff isn’t a member, you should not re-elect him. In law enforcement, there are some good guys. It’s sad that they usually don’t run the police departments.

I suggest that all controls of the police start at the local level. The people have to retake control of their own communities. What would happen if the police were simply disarmed? What would happen if a requirement for becoming a police officer was that the applicant had to have worked as a paramedic for three years prior to his application? What would happen if the people were armed and there were no police at all? What if, like Max Nebraska (see YouTube video), there was no local government? If government is the use of force and violence by one man to control another man, why does any man need government at any level?

We don’t want bigger anything. We want smaller everything, including any form of government. Everything big I have seen has turned out to be bad for the people, and that includes big government, big business, and big religion.

It should be disquieting for you to know that the Pentagon is expecting and preparing for societal breakdown in America. Look at Jade Helm. It’s happening for many reasons. It really is time for the people to act like adults and resume control of their own lives and their own communities, before the police and military initiate martial law. The answer to our police problems are found outside the current corrupt system – not within it.

Bill Allyn

“It is easier to simply shut down the local PDs”

How does one go about doing that?

highlanderjuan

Stop funding the PDs. This typically takes city government to do this, and they are often hesitant to do this because the PDs account for so much revenue to the city coffers.

Americans live on a plantation. Slavery was never abolished by government.

“If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in.” — Alexander Warbucks

EvenTempered

Oh yes! The slave owners are covered by the hand out programs…food stamps, welfare, overwhelming regulations to have businesses, to earn a living wage. In other words, the government is the slave owner. When the slaves have an uprising, then police fear for their lives and cut down on the population of the slaves. How nice.

highlanderjuan

It’s not clear to me whether you are being serious or being facetious.

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, rulers make them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” — ATLAS SHRUGGED

Tre Roberts

Fuck Ayn Rand. Atlas never shrugged. You don’t save the world by shrugging.

highlanderjuan

Tre, you’re sounding pretty ignorant. Too bad you believe in attacking the messenger, rather than attacking the message.

All cheap shots aside, try to think about these things more seriously. They are important to all of us. Become part of the solution and stop being a part of the problem.

Ayn Rand idolized leaders of industry, seeing them as the virtuous caretakers the government could never be. She was blinded by her faith in her ideology. At least government has to appear to have the greater good in mind, corporations don’t even attempt to look like they care about the masses. Ayn Rand was a tool for the corporations who hated those pesky regulations keeping them from dumping toxic waste wherever they pleased.

robyn

Even though they might not have to answer for their actions now, they will probably wish they had when they die and go on to a higher court than here on earth, I’d hate to be a cop facing judgment at the pearly gates. Part of me wishes I could witness a few of these bastards on their judgment day.

Macorichi

Sadly this justice will prolly never happen

Bruce

“A viscous cycle indeed.”

Thick and syrupy, even. “Vicious?” “Vicious cycle” is a thing.

Tre Roberts

grammar cops are so much less annoying when amusing. thank you.

Bruce

Protip: People who assign that title are the annoying ones. “Not being retarded” is always a worthwhile skill.

Bruce

If you’re a writer and you’re loose with the language, you fucked up in what… third grade? In ways that have been fixable, always. It’s like having “I’m a dumbass” written on your face in sharpie and re-applying it every day.

I know this sounds petty but, please, learn the difference between “than” and “then”. Otherwise, I love your site.

Tre Roberts

If we funded more teachers and fewer cops, your dreams might come true.

So What

I can’t stand Satan in our world but right next to him sit cops. Both need to be exterminated

Anon

For the love of god, proofread your posts before you post them! Several times throughout this article the word “then” is used where it should be “than” not to mention the numerous other spelling and grammatical errors… It does great disservice to your credibility when things like that are prevalent in your article. Learn to proofread or hire an editor.

Tre Roberts

for the love of god, work for better education funding instead of huge cuts of federal budget going to wars and huge cuts of municipal budgets going to cops. MORE TEACHERS, FEWER COPS

oppressed populations don’t get good educations
or good nutrition
that’s how you control a populace.
things are exactly as our overlords intend them to be, so get used to the misspellings and grammatical flaws or join us in working for MORE TEACHERS, FEW COPS

From a review of the comments posted, they range all over the place. The problem that the American people have, in general, is that they are poorly educated. OK – get the government out of the education process. In a country with 2 million laws, it can hardly be argued that the people are free, nor can it be argued that the people should know all the laws. Cops and lawyers don’t know all the laws.

Officer Friendly is not friendly, nor is he the most mature guy in the room. He’s also not a nurturer – he’s a tyrant. He’s above the law and is protected by the government when he breaks the law. Few examples of police misconduct ever get prosecuted. All of this spells danger for the average citizen.

You want to change all of this? Get government the hell out of our lives. Government does not represent the people – it never has. Government represents the moneyed elites and the big businesses. If you remove the government from your lives, you remove their enforcers from your lives. Every day we experience the joys of anarchy, where no force and violence are used on us, and where we deal with other humans and their businesses on a voluntary basis. The adults in the room know very well that no one wants or needs force and violence used on them – that force and violence always comes from organized gangs, and in today’s world, that comes mostly from organized cop gangs. Think about it. Make the changes that will stop the madness. Remove government from our lives.

If you want to learn some more about anarchy and how it works, watch some Larken Rose videos on YouTube. ‘What Anarchy isn’t’ and ‘The Tiny Dot’ are both good videos, and there are more. Think about these things. Become the change that you want to see.

Hashian

Go with the help of filmingcop’s… My Uncle Mason recently got a stunning red Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT by working part-time off of a pc.
You can try here ⇢⇢⇢ Start Job Here

The American Reinvestment and
Recovery Act and the brain initiative are the worst scams ever perpetrated on
the American people. Former U. S.
Surgeon General Regina Benjamin Warns:
Biochips Hazardous to Your Health: Warning, biochips may cause
behavioral changes and high suicide rates.
State Attorney Generals are to revoke the licenses of doctors and
dentists that implant chips in patients.
Chip used illegally for GPS, tracking, organized crime, communication
and torture. Virginia state police have been implanting citizens without their
knowledge and consent for years and they are dying! Check out William and
Mary’s site to see the torture enabled by the biochip and the Active Denial
System. See Terrorism and Mental Health
by Amin Gadit or A Note on Uberveillance by MG & Katina Michael or
Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence by Springer or Mind Control,
Microchip Implants and Cybernetics. Check out the audio spotlight by Holosonics.

“Former
Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director and now Google Executive, Regina E. Dugan, has unveiled a super small,
ingestible microchip that we can all be expected to swallow by 2017. “A means
of authentication,” she calls it, also called an electronic tattoo, which takes
NSA spying to whole new levels. She talks of the ‘mechanical mismatch problem
between machines and humans,’ and specifically targets 10 – 20 year olds in her
rant about the wonderful qualities of this new technology that can stretch in
the human body and still be functional. Hailed as a ‘critical shift for
research and medicine,’ these biochips would not only allow full access to
insurance companies and government agencies to our pharmaceutical med-taking
compliancy (or lack thereof), but also a host of other aspects of our lives
which are truly none of their business, and certainly an extension of the
removal of our freedoms and rights.” Google News

The
ARRA authorizes payments to the states in an effort to encourage Medicaid
Providers to adopt and use “certified EHR technology” aka biochips. ARRA will match Medicaid $5 for every $1 a
state provides. Hospitals are paid $2 million to create “crisis stabilization
wards” (Gitmo’s) where state police torture people – even unto death. They stopped my heart 90 times in 6
hours. Virginia Beach EMT’s were called
to the scene.

Mary E. Schloendorff, v. The
Society of New York Hospital 105 N. E. 92, 93 (N. Y. 1914) Justice Cardozo
states, “every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to
determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an
operation without his patient’s consent, commits an assault, for which he is
liable in damages. (Pratt v Davis, 224 Ill. 300; Mohr v Williams, 95 Minn.
261.)

This case precedent requires
police to falsely arrest you or kidnap you and call you a mental health patient
in order to force the implant on you.
You can also be forced to have a biochip if you have an infectious
disease – like Eboli or Aids. Coalition of Justice vs the City of Hampton, VA
settled a case out of court for $500,000 and removal of the biochip. Torture is
punishable by $1,000 per day up to $2 million; Medical battery is worth $2.05
million.

They told my family it was the
brain initiative. This requires
informed, knowledgeable consent. Mark
Warner told me it was research with the Active Denial System by the College of
William and Mary, the USAF, and state and local law enforcement. It is called
IBEX and it is excruciating. If you are
an organ donor, they volunteer you.

All are 14th and 15th amendment slaves based on your all capitalized name and the unrevealed contracts that tie into your birth certificate and fictional strawman name.

The bankruptcy of 1933 changed EVERYTHING and via the unrevealed contracts of your drivers license, SS card, Birth certificate (of ownership) means that you are obligated to obey whatever “law”, really policy, they see fit to implement.

America stopped being free after the Civil war and they’ve been slowly tightening the noose ever since. They’re now ready to close it completely and totally cut off the air supply of everyone.

We’ve not HAD freedom since 1871 at best. The police are a private army and have been at war with you since President Roosevelt, under color of law, altered the Trading With the Enemy Act, effectively declaring all Sovereign Americans to be enemies of the state.

The significance of this is that, as a corporation, the United States has authority to implement laws for “We the People of the United States” but no more authority to implement its laws against “All The People” than does MacDonald Corporations, except for one thing-the contracts we’ve signed as surety for our “Straw-man”…

These contracts binding us together with the United States and the bankers, are actually not a party-in-interest with us, but with our artificial entity, acting as a transmitting utility, or as they term it, the office of ” person,” which
cleverly uses the same descriptive alphabetical denoted letters as the name given to the living breathing people, privately at birth, but with one difference – the form of identification changes the symbolic alphabetical spelling with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

THE UNITED STATES as a corporation, created in England, came under the jurisdiction of England. This entitled England to create laws as England saw fit to do, establish those laws in THE UNITED STATES and everyone who at that time was a 14th Amendment Citizen were subject to obey those laws. This also placed the Congress of THE UNITED STATES above that portion of what we think is the Constitution, not under the authority of the Constitution.

The bankruptcy of 1933 changed EVERYTHING and via the unrevealed contracts of your drivers license, SS card, Birth certificate (of ownership) means that you are obligated to obey whatever “law”, really policy, they see fit to implement.

You’ve only been TOLD that you have freedom, that you’re innocent until proven guilty and all that other BS for the past 140 years. America stopped being free after the Civil war and they’ve been slowly tightening the noose ever since. They’re now ready to close it completely and totally cut off the air supply of everyone.

When we created this group that we call police, the idea was to assure public safety and to moderate crime. Today this has become an independent national team of assassins and public control agents, not unlike the 1930’s Germany. Here the targets are the public and the poor, who ay rise up in revolt if left unchecked. This premise is why we spend money on storm troopers to stop us at every possible excuse and violate our sanctity and block our egress to profess our constitutional rights. We are the victims of overzealous political controls and politicians using the police as private armies. Left unchanged we face a future of police powers that will cripple our constitutional rights by allowing exceptions to be the rules for police.

matt

Good article, but there aren’t more prisons than there are schools. The link posted said there were more prisoners than school teachers, which is still pretty crazy and depressing. The worst part of the system is the incarceration of low-level drug offenders, the low-hanging fruit of victimless crime. How insane is it that some guy getting caught with a gram of weed could end up sleeping next to murderers and rapists. I guess it makes sense if our goal is to turn first time offenders into alienated criminals that cannot survive outside an institution.

The biggest reason to not trust the police (or any state agent) is because it’s not a voluntary service. Nobody contracted them in a voluntary way, so why trust an imposed monopoly?

Christina Rae

The case regarding IQ happened in Connecticut (New Haven, CT) and not NYC and not with the NYPD.

Mike Adams

You need to fire your editor. This sounds and looks like a fourth grader wrote it. It’s a good article but you sound like an idiot.

actionjksn

I do construction and have looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on most dangerous jobs, I’m in like the top 5. So when I see the cops barely cracking the top 15, and these assholes demanding extreme reverence because of how extremely dangerous being a cop is, it about makes my head explode.